Spatio-temporal Variation in Landuse/cover Dynamics in Shahzad River Basin Uttar Pradesh, India: A Geospatial Approach

Abstract

Landuse/cover is an important component that reflects the interaction between environment and human activities. Landuse/cover pattern is an outcome of natural and socio-economic factors and their utilization by man in space and time. The present study makes an attempt to monitor landcover dynamics in Shahzad river basin, a rainfed basin in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh (India) using remote sensing and GIS technique. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was prepared using Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, the lowest and highest elevations encountered in the basin are 280 m and 495 m above MSL respectively. The higher elevations are encountered in southern most parts of the basin whereas lower elevations are found in the north. The general slope is from south to north, as defined by the course of the Shahzad river. Two data set viz. IRS-P6 LISS III data of 2005 and IRSP6 LISS III of 2015 have been analyzed through visual interpretation technique. Visual interpretation technique was used to identify the various landuse/cover categories. Landuse/cover maps of 2005 and 2015 derived from satellite data were digitized in Arc GIS environment. Editing and topology building was carried out using Arc GIS 10 and area under each category of landuse/cover was computed in km2 as well as in percentage. An attempt was made to estimate and quantify the overall change as well as transitional change in landuse/cover classes over a decade. A comparison of 2005 and 2015 data analysis suggests that the area of water body has significantly increased from 19.53 km2 in 2005 to 34.85 km2 in 2015, i.e. 15.32 km2 (1.39%), the area of uncultivated land has decreased from 352.81 km2 (32.61%) in 2005 to 337.80 km2 (30.7%) in 2015, showing 15.01 km2 (1.91%) decrease. The area of cultivated land has increased from 464.78 km2 (42.76%) to 473.06 km2 (43%), i.e. 8.28 km2 (0.24%). However, vegetation in the watershed has reduced, i.e. under open forest and dense forest has reduced by 11.37 km2 (1.04%) and 13.27 km2 (1.21%) respectively during 2005-2015. Open scrub, stone quarry, built-up land, exposed rock and wasteland have also reported change in their respective areas. Open scrub has slightly increased from 73.63 km2 (6.69%) to 76.23 km2 (6.93%), whereas stone quarry has increased from 1.78 km2 (0.16%) to 3.53 km2 (0.32%), which suggests expansion in quarrying activity. Change matrix analysis indicates that cultivated land, uncultivated land, open scrub and wasteland are the most unstable categories which have interchanged into different landuse/cover during 2005-2015. Moreover it also indicates, cultivated land (38.42 ha), uncultivated land (51 ha) and open scrub (59.64 ha) has been converted into settlement area.